


Greener Grasses

by dieofthatroar



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Anxiety Disorder, Canon Compliant, Coming Out, Depression, Homophobia, M/M, Substance Abuse, Suicidal Thoughts, canonical toxic masculinity, post 3-26
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-25 22:09:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13222230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dieofthatroar/pseuds/dieofthatroar
Summary: In the weeks after the Stanley Cup, many things went unsaid.“I don’t want to comment on Jack Zimmermann’s private life,” Kent practiced into the mirror. He shook his head. “I’m not able to—I’m not the one who—fuck.”“I didn’t want to keep y’all waiting for so long, so to make it up, I’ve come up with two new—no, no…” Bitty closed his eyes, took a breath, and put on his best smile for his camera. “Y’all probably already figured out I’ve turned off the comments for now—hah.”“I don’t remember,” Jack said when he meant he couldn’t find the right words. It was close enough. What did it matter? It was a different him, back when they called him Zimms.





	Greener Grasses

**Author's Note:**

> Anyone else have that moment when you find out your sad Kent Parson headcanons were probably less sad than canonical Kent Parson? Yeah, me too. I wrote this in two days to make up for it. Happy New Year.

It was just a little gif, looping over and over on Scraps’ phone. It was grainy, like it was captured from a TV then put through the grind of facebook or twitter’s video uploading one too many times. Kent must have watched it three times through before Carl peeked over his shoulder, but it was like the sound had already faded out of the world. A fuzzy static remained, the guys’ laughter bouncing around inside like they were far away.

Kent tried to force his lips to widen, let loose a whisper of air caught in his chest, but nothing came out. He sucked in a breath and looked up to see Jeff’s eyes slip away. “Come on, Carl,” someone said. It didn’t matter. Why couldn’t he _fucking_ get his shit together? They were laughing. They were all fucking laughing and he couldn’t get himself to join in.

“You alright, Parser?” Scraps said as Kent swallowed the rest of his drink and signaled to the bartender for another. “You don’t… I don’t think I’ve ever seen you drink more than—”

“Fuck off, Scraps,” Kent said. “You’re one to talk. What drink’re you on?” He wrestled his face back into shape, he couldn’t let the scowl pulling at mouth loose. He reached for his next gin and tonic. Questions. There’d be questions and he wouldn’t be able to keep it together. He could feel his world falling apart second by second.

He’d made half-plans for this years ago. NDA’s, speeches, what to say what not to say. Shit.

Kent took a breath. He just needed to keep cool for another half an hour or so and he could ditch without anyone noticing. He drank. He grinned and it was painful.

Scraps shrank back like he could feel it too. Shit, he needed to get out of here before he did something stupid.

“I don’t think—”

“If you fucking say another word,” Kent said, soft and measured.

“But you and Zi—”

"Captain’s orders.” Kent stood, the bar stool screeching as it slid back.

Scraps shut his mouth just as Carl turned toward them again. He scratched at his beard as he said, “turning in already Parser?”

“The fun part’s done, right?” Kent said, gesturing at the screens.

“What are you talking about?” Carl said. “The fun’s just started. There’re already edits of that fuckin’ shit show out on the ice going around, have a look.”

Kent clenched his fist.

“If you wanted a shit show, Carl, I—”

Jeff grabbed his shoulder and led him away. Down through the crowds still pointing and laughing and it all smelled faintly of smoke and unearned sweat. He led them out into the Las Vegas night and whispered, “not a fight you want to get into right now.”

Kent elbowed him away and pulled out his car keys. “Not like I’ll have a choice soon.”

 

Two days later, safe and swept away to Montreal by a quick-thinking Bad Bob Zimmermann, Bitty lounged on the couch, pointedly ignoring the tempting call of the TV remote or the computer down the hall. He wiggled his feet in his socks and fit his fingers around the cup of coffee Alicia handed him when he woke up. He sniffed, sighed, and tucked his knees into his chest.

“Jack still asleep?” Alicia said, taking the chair beside him.

“He deserves to sleep for a week,” Bitty said. “I don’t think he got a wink in the last couple days.”

Alicia smiled, soft and kind. Bitty could see, especially in those moments, how beautiful she must have been when she and Bob met. Even now, Bitty was a little in awe of the graceful way she tucked her own drink in her fingers and leaned back into the cushions.

“And what about you, dear? You could use the rest too.”

“Oh, no. I’ve been alright,” Bitty said. “Thank you so much for letting us stay. I know Jack and I should have planned a little…” Bitty chuckled. “Well, planned at all. I know Jack was a little torn up about skipping out on the press, but—”

“Don’t worry about it, Eric,” Alicia said. “You know you have a home here, right? You’re always welcome.”

“Thanks.”

Alicia blinked, then put her mug down on the coffee table. “Have you spoken to your parents?”

“I told them where I was headin’ so they wouldn’t be worried,” Bitty said. “I didn’t—well, I didn’t call, I just emailed them and I—”

“They’re good people, Eric,” Alicia said. “I know it’s hard. And I can’t tell you that they’ll be perfect. But I’ve seen how they love you.”

“I know—Lord, of course _I know_ —It’s not that, it’s just—”

“They’ll be worried about you no matter what,” she said. “It’s their job.”

The guilt gnawed at Bitty’s stomach, but he knew it wasn’t that easy. It was never so simple as _your family will always love you._ There were debts and negotiations and Bitty could just imagine his mama’s face when he had to admit that he’d been lying to her. It was bad enough when his aunt stole a recipe or snubbed her in front of relatives, but this? This was something more important than jam.

And Bitty could remember when his trans cousin was outed at Thanksgiving by her own father. He sometimes kept in contact with her on facebook, but what could he do? She’d stopped coming to family gatherings.

Bitty hardly noticed as Alicia stood and walked back and forth from the living room and back. She peeled Bitty’s empty coffee cup from his hands and replaced it with a thick family photo album.

“This usually cheers me up,” she said.

“Oh, goodness, are these his baby photos?” Bitty said. “I’m not sure if I could handle them this early in the morning.”

“These are from a little later,” Alicia said, laughing. She opened the cover, the plastic sticking together and making that crinkling noise like each time was the first time. All these memories made new with each look. Bitty found himself reaching for the first page.

There, smiling up at him, was Jack at maybe 10 or 11. He was in skates (of course) but out on a pond or a lake—Bitty couldn’t see the tree line on the other side of the ice. Pink bloomed around his still childlike cheeks and his eyes were bluer than the sky above him.

Bitty turned the pages and watch Jack age, now the gangly arms and longer face of 13 or 14. There was a series of photos from a family dinner, some sort of roast at the center of the table with people all around, both looking at the camera and not. Jack was sitting next to a girl around his age and Bitty remembered him talking about a cousin, Marie was it? They were laughing, then Jack stood, and in the final two, he was gone.

The next several photos didn’t feature Jack at all. There were snow-covered trees and an empty lot in front of what Bitty assumed was a rink. Some storefronts, a bike on the grass in the summer. Somebody’s hands on a railing overlooking some water.

“This was from when Jack started taking photos himself,” Alicia explained. “We got him that camera when he was fifteen, I think. It was nice to see the world through his eyes, once in a while.”

Bitty turned the pages and came face to face with Kent Parson, grinning like he hadn’t learned how to yet and so, so young. It was sometime in spring, with the flowers falling off the fruit trees, and Kent was there leaning against the back of a car like nobody could make him move.

Bitty frowned. He still didn’t like him, though the feeling was faded and murky and blended with the Kent Parson he saw on TV. All he remembered—the hate he held on to—was the wicked voice meant to hurt. Bitty knew now how well Kent had crafted those words to carve into Jack’s self-worth.

“Jack wasn’t talking to us much then,” Alicia said. She turned the next page herself, seeking something in the images that Bitty couldn’t see. “I—I can’t blame him. I never understood the pressure he was under like his father did, but it was still difficult. I couldn’t tell if when he didn’t tell me things it was because he was a teenager, or because—well—because of something else.”

Jack still grew in those next photos—sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. He grew a young man’s beard, patchy and uneven, and had someone else take his photo in front of the ice at what Bitty guessed was a championship game. If Bitty hadn’t known—if Jack hadn’t told him how messed up he’d been in those days—he would have never guessed that this smiling teen was having as much trouble as he was. All Bitty could see was the lights, his uniform, and nervous excitement.

The stairs to the second floor creaked and Alicia closed the photo album. Jack padded around the corner, sleep still in his smile. “Morning,” he said and walked into the kitchen.

“Call your parents, Eric,” Alicia said as the cabinets rattled as Jack made his breakfast. “They want to know you’re alright.”

 

Kent didn’t know who to talk to. It was one week out and they’ve already started asking questions, pulling secrets from unmarked graves and whispering _Kenny, Kenny_ in his ear. He’d thrown his phone onto the bed and pulled his shades down and chugged water from his sink until he thought he might be able to drown.

Kit mewed, soft but insistent until Kent poured her food into her bowl.

“I don’t want to comment on Jack Zimmermann’s private life,” Kent practiced into the mirror. He shook his head. “I’m not able to—I’m not the one who—fuck.”

Kit mewed, but this time she’d been fed. She just wanted attention, the brat. Kent picked her up and put her on the countertop, hoping she wouldn’t shred up the toilet paper again.

Kent stared back into the mirror, right into his eyes, willing himself to look. “I understand where Jack is coming from because—because I’m—”

_Curses shouted across the ice. Fresh, hot pain across his skin. Blade and skin and blood._

Kent’s phone was ringing from the bedroom. The caller ID read “Bob Zimmermann.” He didn’t want to answer it.

“Hello?”

“Kent, son,” Bob said. “How are you doing?”

 Kit was at his feet again, waiting for his attention. “Fine,” he said. “Fine.”

“Kent.” Bob sighed across the line.

He couldn’t say anything. He couldn’t make words, couldn’t make sounds. “I’m not—”He walked back to his bathroom but couldn’t even look himself in the eye. “I can’t—”

“You’re going to have to say something,” Bob said.

His voice shook. Kit cocked his head at him. “What happens if I don’t?”

 

Bitty and Jack arrived back in Providence after two weeks up in Montreal. Jack promised Georgia a real presser, one he’d rehearsed the answers to and actually showed up for this time. Bitty would never say so to Bob or Alicia, but he had been itching for his own kitchen the whole time.

He stress-baked, everyone knew. This was his time of need.

But even after a week back by themselves and two dozen experimental pie recipes, Bitty couldn’t figure out how to begin his next vlog. The camera’s light shone the red of record.

“Welcome new subscribers! Goodness, there are a lot of you,” Bitty tried, then shook his head. He gripped the edge of the countertop. “I didn’t want to keep y’all waiting for so long, so to make it up, I’ve come up with _two_ new—no, no…” Bitty closed his eyes, took a breath, and put on his best smile. “Y’all probably already figured out I’ve turned off the comments for now—hah.”

“Still working, Bits?” Jack said, sticking his head through the kitchen door.

“Oh, it’s almost lunchtime, isn’t it?” Bitty said. “I can—”

“Don’t let me rush you.”

“No, no. I’m done for now,” he said and turned his camera off. “Just about starving, anyway.”

 

Kent learned in his first year with the Aces that there were things you didn’t say if you wanted to play. And despite how much his cheeks bled from where he bit them at night to stay awake and how many hours in the gym was enough to distract him, there were some things that had said anyway.

He was young and volatile if his old coaches were to be believed, and the last thing he’d said to the boy he loved was “please don’t die.”

Kent didn’t think would ever forgive Jack for forever equating the helplessness of romance with a fistful of pills. God, it was even worse than Romeo and Juliet. Kent was too much of a coward to kiss the poison off his lips.

The only thing worse than the curses he threw Jack in his mind were the ones he heard from other’s mouths.

The first mistake Kent had made was to tell his then captain about what had happened between him and Jack. About what he _was_ , but never in those terms. “We were together,” was what he said. “We fucked and he overdosed and sometimes I still think it was my fault.”

“Will this be a problem?” the captain said.

“I don’t want it to be,” Kent had said.

The talk around his teammates never changed.

The next mistake Kent had made was a constant one, steady and true. He was never a good liar and his eyes were worse than his tongue. “Parser, why aren’t you laughing?” “Parser, come on, it was just a joke.”

Donnie, a defenseman who reminded Kent of a kid he’d spat on once in the Q, wouldn’t let it go. “Seriously, man, what’s wrong with you?”

A short talk with the captain, a look Kent couldn’t wipe from his face, and the sharp clip of a doorframe on his shoulder led to “fag,” spat back in his face and Donnie wearing a grimace that should have belonged to Kent. “This won’t be a problem, will it?”

All Kent wanted to do was skate. When he was young, before his father left, Kent would skate as an excuse to never be home. He would skate until the bruises from practice or the blisters from his skates would hurt more than any hit he had to take when he returned home. He kept skating even after he never had to worry about that again because he didn’t like that the empty rooms in his house made him lonely as well as relieved.

He wanted to skate until he forgot there was anything outside the rink and he wanted everyone to stop and stare at him, alone in this fishbowl of an arena, and say _hey, that’s Kent Parson._ He wanted to be the best player in the league because then, maybe then, nobody could say anything to him that would stick. He just wanted to skate.

It wasn’t his mistake to take what was meant to be outside onto the ice, but it was his mistake to let it stay there. Donnie checked him a little too hard during a scrimmage and nobody was the wiser. Kent tried to give it back—he thought being himself, unapologetically, would put him off. But the checks got harder during practice, then a badly placed stick sent him sprawling during a game and that other player was too close to stop and suddenly there was blood on the ice. His blood.

“If you don’t fucking get your shit together,” Donnie said, “it won’t just be me out there, putting you straight.”

(“Put you straight,” was something Kent’s father had said too, though Kent didn’t remember what he’d meant by it.)

Donnie’s hand was on his neck and Kent’s arm was still dripping blood through the bandages and there was no one else with them in the locker room after the game.

“You’re lucky I won’t say anything,” Donnie said. “You wouldn’t survive a minute in the league if they knew.”

It was the playoffs and Kent was already out for two games because of the injury, so Kent learned how not to say anything. All he wanted to do was win.

The final mistake, though Kent couldn’t think of it as anything but a blessing, was letting Jeff Troy be his secret keeper. The best thing about Jeff was that he never asked questions. He never wanted to know. He helped Kent be normal. Helped him learned to shut his mouth.

Because telling other people he liked men meant he would have to see those pills again every time he fell asleep. It was better to dream of the Cup.

 

It was just a little video, wasn’t it? But now it was everywhere. Following Kent when he went to the gym, when scrolled through his twitter, when he just wanted to escape it. Rainbows and streamers and ridicule. There were other little videos, he knew, when they were seventeen and shitfaced and were too young to have lawyers. Maybe they looked like nothing. Maybe people had always assumed the right things about them.

“Ya look like shit, Parser,” Carl joked, nudging his arm. Kent stared up at another news segment playing the Stanley cup footage. Again and again. “Don’t tell me you actually care what they say about that—”

“He was my friend,” Kent said.

“Shows you can’t really know a guy, huh?” Carl said.

Kent looked back down at his phone, at a string of unanswered texts he’d sent to Jack Zimmermann. 

 

Coward was a word that Bitty had a complex relationship with. Was he being a coward if he didn’t want to face something that nobody else had to deal with? Was it cowardly to want, so desperately, to be like everyone else?

His mama once told him when he was very little that he was very brave for running away from a bully at school and telling the teacher. His classmates said he’d been weak. It was the second week of the sixth grade and he was sick of being thrown against lockers. He was sick of tiptoeing around corners and being ashamed of walking to class because, what, he was small? He had a little tuft of hair that always stuck up to the side and giggled with his voice thrown high? Gay wasn’t even in his vocabulary yet except as a weapon and Bitty was tired of apologizing for how others saw him.

He’d confided in his music teacher, Mrs. Toby. The next week, there were stricter regulations and more grown-up eyes watching the halls. The bullies just picked more secluded corners to trip him hiss threats into his ear.

But that night, three weeks after Bitty went and did what everyone around was telling him was _brave_ , Bitty decided to be a coward for just a little longer.

The front door to Jack’s apartment rattled with each knock and since Bitty was getting changed in the bedroom, Jack was the one to answer it.

“Why are you here?”                                     

“If you’d fucking answered your phone just _once_ —”

“How’d you even get up here?”

Jack’s voice was set to cold. Distant with deeper anger, like how he sounded in the last few weeks when reporters asked the wrong questions but he still had promised to answer. Bitty peeked around the bedroom door, trying to catch a glimpse of who had come. The voice sounded familiar but—

“You seem to have a standing order with the guard downstairs,” Kent Parson said, hand in the threshold so Jack couldn’t slam the door in his face. “Hockey players get to go right on up. Good thing I’m such a recognizable face.”

“Get out, Parse.”

“Party here a lot?”

“You can’t just show up in my home—”

“I wouldn’t have had to if you’d texted me back. You aren’t answering your emails or calls or… what was I supposed to do?”

“Go through my agent,” Jack said.

“Fuck you.”

Bitty kept himself hidden because he was a coward and he didn’t know what to do. Jack hadn’t told him that Kent was trying to contact him, but they’ve both been told to hold back on excess outside contact so their words wouldn’t be manipulated by the press. But Kent Parson? Really, Bitty was glad to have forgotten about him in this whole process.

 “This is my home,” Jack said. “Bitty and I don’t want anyone coming here without our explicit invitation.”

“I gave it _weeks,_ Zimms.”

“Get out.”

This was too similar. Memories of pumping music and Shitty’s shouting and the creaking of the Haus came back to Bitty and he was _still_ just listening behind a door. He and Jack were partners, though. Now, Bitty had every right to go out there and tell Kent off like he should have done years ago instead of staying hidden away like a coward.

But something made him stop. Something more than just the fear of confrontation and the ease of letting Jack handle it.

“Just—” Kent’s voice wobbled. Bitty frowned. “Just tell me what to fucking say to them. What the hell do I say to them?”

“That’s your problem.”

“No. No, _you’ve_ made it my problem. I was just fine before you started the whole league on a witch hunt and—”

“That sort of language is exactly what—”

“It’s not about the fucking _language_ Zimms! I don’t know what sort of privilege you bought yourself with that higher education of yours but it’s a luxury to not be scared—to not think your own teammates are going to…”

“Going to what?”

Kent went silent. Bitty looked at his hands and remembered being scared.

“You know what?” Kent said. “Never mind. I don’t know what I was expecting when I—whatever, man.”

“No,” Bitty said, finally extracting himself from the shadows and crossing the living room toward the door. His heart was beating quickly, but he was glad his voice didn’t stutter. “No, you stay.”

“Bits,” Jack said.

“Jack, I will not have someone visit this late and not at least have a bite to eat,” Bitty said. “Kent, hun, it looks like you’re the type to not know how to feed yourself anyway.”

Kent balked. “Excuse me?”

“Not a specific insult, y’all are like that.” Bitty pulled plates and forks from the cabinets and lay them out on the table. “Now, Kent is going to stay, and we’re going to _sit_ and _talk_ like civilized people—”

“Bits.”

“—because my mama raised a boy who welcomes everyone into the house. Kent? What sorta pie’s your favorite?”

Bitty strode to the door and pulled Kent in, hoping that the neighbors didn’t hear too much of the conversation through the halls. The door shut behind them and Kent looked like small, dumb animal—on his toes and searching the room. He shouldn’t have done this, but he’d already said the words. This boy who he’d just seen smiling up at him from old photos with the sharp smirk of a teenager who thinks they own the world was now in their entryway, looking like there was nothing left of the world to desire.

“I have peach,” Bitty prodded. He’d make this work or else Kent Parson would be a ghost they’d never shake. “Cherry, apple…”

Kent cleared his throat. “Apple?”

Bitty smiled. “’Course you’d want apple. Come on, sit.”

 

Alicia Zimmermann had given Bitty that photo album they had looked at when he had first arrived at their house. “For safekeeping,” she had said, tucking it into Bitty’s backpack. “I think Jack also needs reminding of what he had been thinking, way back then.”

Jack—Bitty’s Jack, who had grown into his broad shoulders and sad eyes—picked half-heartedly at his slice of pie, decidedly not looking up at Kent sitting across the table. Bitty held his tongue. Kent… well, Kent almost looked like he was enjoying himself.

“Fuck, this is good,” Kent said. “Zimms, you eat this all the time? Fuck.”

At the very least, Bitty knew how to be flattered.

“The boy has a decent tongue,” he said as he put another slice down in front of Kent.

Kent licked his lips and shot Bitty a look. “I have a fabulous tongue, thank you.”

Jack dropped his fork and stood.

“Honey—”

“I can’t do this,” Jack said.

“Not trying to steal your man, Zimms,” Kent said. He shoveled a large bite into his mouth, now blueberry, and his eyes widened again. “Shit, this pie though.”

Bitty thought about the first time he met Kent, memory caked in shame and anger. He tried to wade through that feeling, to reach for how he’d felt before that night was ruined. How Kent could walk into a space and make everyone turn to look—how star-struck Bitty had been. _Modest guy_ , Shitty had said. And Bitty trusted Shitty, right?

Lord, if Jack wasn’t going to do this, Bitty couldn’t just let it be.

“Why are you here, Kent?” Bitty asked.

Kent’s eyes darted up to Jack. He was still standing, his chair pushed back, looking like being there was a sentence he had to endure—invisible ropes binding his hands to the table and feet to the floor.

“You’re more afraid of me than you are of them,” Kent said to Jack. He said it like he had just realized something important. Like the moment when Bitty would listen to a song on the radio and not know what it was until the title would suddenly slip easily from his lips and _ah, that’s what that was called._  

“What?”

“I can’t believe—wow.” Kent took a breath. “Wow, fine. Makes sense. I was so bad to you, huh? That you can’t even fucking look at me.”

Jack lifted his gaze, just to prove him wrong. Bitty bit down on the _“Oh, Jack,”_ caught in his throat.

“You could have at least warned me,” Kent said. “I—I wouldn’t have stopped you.”

“Bitty and I don’t need to ask for anyone’s _permission.”_

“No, you don’t,” Kent said. “A heads-up wouldn’t have been permission. It’s just a favor for—for a friend. Or—whatever.”

“Why would I need to—”

“You’ve outed me,” Kent said. “You’ve done to me what you were so fucking scared of and you don’t even think for one moment that it’d be worth your time to even talk to me.”

Jack shook his head. “You can deny it.”

“You really think—” Kent laughed. “Fuck. You really think it’s that easy? _Oh, sure, Parser. Tell us again about the fag ‘cross the ice and all the fucked up secrets you two_ — _”_

“Shut up,” Jack said.

“I can say what I want to the press, sure, but—why are you not scared right now, Jack?”

“Why are you?” Jack said.

“Kent,” Bitty said, carefully. “You’re not out to your team?”

“I thought you’d care,” Kent said to Jack. His words were arrows, shooting past Bitty’s concern. “At the very least I thought you’d remember—you’d think that it’d be worth—”

“We haven’t been friends for years,” Jack said.

“Kent,” Bitty said. “Hun. Is there _anyone_ who knows?”

“I could have destroyed you,” Kent continued. “I could have fucking—you wouldn’t have ever been able to play again.”

“You want me to be grateful?”

“No,” Kent hissed. “I want you to apologize.”

“I’m done apologizing for who I am,” Jack said.

And any other time, Bitty would have been so proud. He had watched Jack learn to express his love in the Samwell rink—becoming a captain who cared for his team as much as the score. His self-worth changed, morphed, and became stronger. He could look at Bitty now and say he wasn’t afraid and Bitty was so, so proud.

Bitty didn’t know it could be turned into a weapon.

“We’re done,” Jack said. “We’ve talked. You have to leave now.”

“Jack, it’s late,” Bitty said.

“I want him gone,” Jack said.

“No,” Bitty said. He smiled. It was his plate-shattering, _damn you and your store-bought scones cousin Beth_ , _I’m the better person_ smile. He put a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Honey, you got up early this morning. Go to bed. I’ll set up the guest room for Kent.”

Kent ducked his head. “I don’t want—”

“Doesn’t matter what you want, hun,” Bitty said. “I’ll get you some toiletries.”

 

Bitty found Jack changed into a loose sleeping shirt, staring out the window of their bedroom. Kent had agreed to the guest room with few words, but Bitty didn’t think he’d be able to sleep for some time.

Jack’s lids, though, looked heavy.

“Figure out which one of his teammates to contact,” Jack said.

“Do you really think that’s a good idea?”

“I know Kent,” Jack said. “He would have someone on the Aces on his side.”

“You _knew_ Kent,” Bitty said.

“What?”

“You can’t say what he does and doesn’t have.”

Jack looked down at Bitty. The bedside lamp was the only light in the room. It cast a soft glow from Jack’s side of the bed, spilled across the floor, and warmed the silhouette of the two of them standing side by side. Jack pulled Bitty in close, breathing in the smell of his hair and planting a kiss on the top of his head. Bitty melted into his arms.

“I’m sorry,” Jack said. “I shouldn’t have acted like that.”

“I’m not the one you need to say that to.”

Jack squeezed Bitty arm and rested his chin on the top of Bitty’s head. “Sounds easy, doesn’t it?” he said. “You’re right. I don’t know him anymore.”

 

Jack fell asleep to the feel of Bitty’s fingers through his hair. After shutting off the light, Bitty grabbed his laptop and headed back to the living room. He stuck his earbuds in and did what he swore to Alicia and Bob he wouldn’t do since the cup—he looked up the press.

He didn’t want to search himself, though, or Jack. He glanced quickly through the general articles, not wanting to dive deep into think pieces or blogs, but found himself instead in a series of interviews by falconers after the win. Falconers led to Schooners led to a backlog of interviews that had nothing at all to do with him.

Bitty found an interview Kent did before the first game the Aces played against the Falconers.

“Of course I’m excited to play against Jack Zimmermann,” the Kent on the screen said. “He is a good player, and from what I’ve seen, is working well with his team. Not as good as we’ve been playing.” Kent smirked at the camera. “But my opinion won’t matter once we’re out there on the ice.”

Somewhere in the room, a phone buzzed. Bitty checked his pocket and made sure it wasn’t his. He clicked another link.

“It’s never easy to lose,” Kent was saying, mic in his face, sometime at the end of their playoff run. His forehead was still slick with sweat.

“Who will you be rooting for in the finals?”

“Anyone who can beat the Schooners.” Kent laughed. “But I’m only saying that because it’s fresh, aren’t I? I’m looking forward to watching some good hockey.”

“And what about Zimmermann?”

The smile froze on Kent’s face. “What about Zimmermann?”

“Will you be cheering for him in the finals?”

The phone buzzed again. Bitty ignored it. He hit the next interview. This time, Kent was dressed in street clothes, somewhere outside in the Las Vegas sun. His sunglasses made his expression hard to read, but Bitty flinched as soon as he heard his voice.

“Why does it matter?”

The reporter leaned in. “We want to know what you think of the announcement—”

“It wasn’t an announcement,” someone next to Kent joked. One of the other Aces, Bitty recognized, though he didn’t know all their names. “That was a fucking _display.”_

“So, do you find issue with—”

“That’s not what I said,” Kent said. “Who cares what we think? Ask us about the finals, and we’ll answer. Don’t ask us this bullshit.”

Bitty frowned. The next recommended link was an article: _Turning Point in the NHL? The Duty of Other Queer Players_.

Another reporter’s voice blared on the video. “Can you speak to the rumors surrounding Jack Zimmermann during the draft?”

Kent’s lips turned down. “What?”

“Jesus, Parser, are we still talking about this?” the other player said. “Make up something good so we can get on—”

“Shut up, Wiley,” Kent said. Then, to the reporter. “Think about why you’re asking that question. Think for a fucking minute about what it would mean if I answer the way you want.”

The phone buzzed again and Bitty thought it didn’t sound like Jack’s either. He got up and followed the sound to a phone he’d never seen before, forgotten on the table. Kent’s. The buzzing stopped and the screen lit up _8 messages and 5 missed calls from Jeff Troy_.

_Jeff Troy (3:20pm): What the hell do you mean, take care of Kit?_

_Jeff Troy (3:21pm): When are you getting back?_

_Jeff Troy (5:03pm): Pick up your damn phone_

_Jeff Troy (5:12pm): I don’t want to see you on the news tomorrow_

_Jeff Troy (5:12pm): I didn’t mean that. Please just call me back._

_Jeff Troy (9:45pm): Scraps told me what happened. You ok?_

_Jeff Troy (12:37am): I don’t care where you are just let me know if you’re ok_

_Jeff Troy (1:01am): Please_

Bitty swiped across the notification and listened for the sound of ringing on the other side. Jeff picked up on the first ring.

“What the hell, Kent, I’ve been worried—”

“It’s not Kent,” Bitty said.

“What?” Jeff said. “Then, who—no. No, shit, what happened—”

“Kent’s fine!” Bitty said quickly. “He’s asleep. I just—I saw the phone was ringing and I…”

“Oh,” Jeff said. “Ok. Right.”

“I’m sorry you’ve been worried.”

“Yeah, um, thanks? Who exactly am I talking to?”

Bitty sat down in the chair Kent sat that night. It was the one usually reserved guests, out of habit more than by design. Bitty liked putting his feet up on the chair across and looking out the window during dinner, so Jack usually sat in the chair at the head of the table to be next to him. He hardly ever sat looking back into the apartment.

“I’m not sure if I should answer that,” Bitty said.

“Right.” Jeff sighed and the phone distorted the sound into static. “Right.”

“You look out for him.”

“When he lets me,” Jeff said. “Look. You don’t have to tell me who you are, but can you make sure he gets home in one piece? The team needs him.”

“The team, huh?”

“You know what I mean.”

Bitty thought about the Kent Parson in those interviews, too scared to say anything meaningful, but too angry to say nothing. “Yeah. Yeah, I know.”

 

In the morning, Kent emerged from the guest bedroom when Bitty was making breakfast. He didn’t look like he had gotten much sleep, though Bitty knew that he also never looked like much in the mornings and so he shouldn’t be one to judge.

“Jack’s just gone out for a run,” Bitty said.

Kent nodded like he already knew. “I left my phone out here somewhere.”

Bitty pointed to the table, where he’d left it last night. “Um—Jeff called? He wanted to check in.”

Kent didn’t look angry that Bitty had answered his phone. He didn’t look like much at all.

“Sure.”

“I didn’t tell him where you were though—I didn’t know—”

“That’s fine.”

“I think you should tell him where you are.”

Kent slipped his phone into his pocket. “Jeff can handle himself.”

Sometimes, when Bitty wanted to punch someone, he thought of recipes that required lots of kneading. It being so early in the morning, and with a dwindling pantry, he figured he would have to make due.

“Come here, I want some help making these scones.”

Kent, surprisingly, followed without protest. He stalked into the kitchen behind Bitty, hands stuffed into his pockets like he was holding them down. He wore the same shirt as he did last night, slightly rumpled. He hadn’t used the spare one of Jack’s shirts Bitty had given him to sleep in.

Kent simply watched as Bitty got the flour and butter and bowls and spoons out onto the counters. When he inched closer, Bitty pointed to a cabinet and asked Kent to find the salt and sugar and honey. He did as he was told.

“My blender gets jealous when I want to do things by hand,” Bitty said, “but for scones, I think the texture needs the personal touch, you know? Here, you try.”

Kent rolled up his sleeves and dug his fingers into the mix.

“Just rub, like that,” Bitty said. “To get the crumbles.”

“You teach people a lot?” Kent asked.

“I’ve got this—or, had, um—this youtube channel where I do a bunch of stuff like this. But my team, you know, they’re always askin’”

“I bet PR got you to take those down,” Kent said.

“They’re on private right now, so I guess so.”

Kent brushed his fingers across the edge of the bowl, trying to get the clumps of flour still sitting dry at the sides. “I’m sorry.”

“For what, hun?”

Kent blinked. “For the videos.”

Bitty pulled milk from the fridge. “Oh, um—its fine, really. I like doing this in person better and it’s not like it’ll be forever.”

“Still,” Kent said. He rolled half-made dough between his fingers. “Why did you let me stay?”

“Wash your hands off and grab one of those wooden spoons,” Bitty said. “I heard you say something when you got here. That it’s a luxury not to be scared?”

Bitty could feel Kent’s eyes on his back.

“Something hit home?” Kent said.

“Good phrasing.”

Kent handed him the spoon. “I don’t want to swap sob stories.”

“That wasn’t what I was intending,” Bitty said.

“Jack doesn’t get it,” Kent said. “He was always more scared of ideas. Of _what ifs_ or _how will I becomes._ And then, once it’s done, the fear disappears. Like it never fucking existed in the first place. Like the past can’t hurt him.”

“Some of what he’d done _does_ still hurt him.”

“Huh, really?” Kent said. “I wouldn’t know.”

Bitty spread flour over the counter and helped Kent roll the dough out into circles. He noticed then how Kent’s hands shook. Bitty decided it would be best for him to cut the dough.

“My mama liked to tell me you could tell how much love was in someone’s heart through their cooking,” Bitty said. “It’s why we like home cooked meals so much. We go to restaurants to get interesting tastes, but you can’t mimic the love of someone close to you. She claimed she could taste when I was baking because I was angry or baking because I was anxious.”

“That’s a little terrifying,” Kent said.

“Oh, shush. In a good way, I mean.” Bitty stuck the baking sheets into the oven and set a timer. “But it might also be why she feels so betrayed by my favoring my Aunt Judy’s recipe for jam and all.”

“What did you bake for her after the cup?” Kent asked. “I can’t imagine what she could taste in that victory pie? Cake?”

Bitty shook his head.

“Challah bread?”

Bitty checked the timer and started piling the dishes into the sink.

“You haven’t talked to her,” Kent guessed.  

“We’ve exchanged texts.”

Kent frowned. “They aren’t happy.”

“That’s—that’s not it, really,” Bitty said. “They want what’s best for me and I don’t even know what that is yet. Can I blame them for being worried?”

“No, you can’t.”

“I’m scared, but I don’t know what I’m scared of.”

Kent leaned against the counter, either not noticing or not caring that the edge of his shirt was getting covered in flour. “Is it dangerous?”

“No,” Bitty said. “They would never—”

“Don’t say never.”

Bitty shut his mouth. “It’s not like that,” he said. “It’s the talk. The rest of my family? They’re not going to react well. And my dad’s position as coach, and what will my mama’s friends say, and—”

“You owe them a call.”

“You sound like Alicia Zimmermann.”

Kent smiled for the first time that morning, weak but insistent. Like he was trying hard to tell Bitty something. “It says too much about me that I’ve always wanted to be more like Alicia than Bad Bob.”

 

Bitty thought he tasted something like forgiveness in the scones he and Kent made together, but even he thought it was too much to mention it.

He let Kent doze after they ate and he texted Jeff back on Kent’s phone saying _yes, he’s still here_ and stayed out of the way when Jack came back.

 

After he overdosed, many people in Jack’s life had told him in a multitude of different ways that it wasn’t _him,_ back then. That a mental illness could change him, warp his thoughts and convince him he wasn’t worth the life he was given. It was a false choice. Not truly a mistake. Just this gremlin he carried with him, like the devil on his shoulder, that prodded him away from the light.

A lot of the talk was bullshit.

He drank it up, though, if it meant he could have a second chance. He could throw that Jack—Zimms, Z, Wunderkind—away and throw his hands up and say, _hey, it wasn’t me. It wasn’t me._

He talked to his parents, told them he was sorry. Told them that he could think clearly now, with the new meds. That he’d never touch alcohol again, though denied the label addict with all the other names he was given.

Jack told himself that every time his hand searched for Kent’s by his side and his heart sank when he remembered it wasn’t there, that it was that gremlin part of him that loved him. He told himself that so many times that he believed it.

Every new thing he did was an act of defiance. The coaching, the school, his new friends. He built this new Jack—this _good_ Jack—from scratch and was proud of what he’d created. He wanted to show the world. But, for some reason, Kent didn’t want to see it.

He found Kent by the window looking down at the view.

“I paid money to strangers to keep their mouths shut,” Kent said, watching Jack’s reflection in the glass. “Too bad I couldn’t pay you off, too.”

“You make more money than I do.”

“I did,” Kent said. “What a nice experiment to run. I wonder how your numbers will change.”

Jack picked an apartment where they could see the river because he liked being near water. This time of year, the greenery covered the water’s edge, but the glint of the sun still made it back to their window.

“I know you have a training camp in a couple days,” Jack said. “You need to go home.”

Kent didn’t say anything. He just at the water like it was something foreign. Something he didn’t believe existed.

“How high up are we?” Kent said, leaning his head against the glass. He closed his eyes. “Nice view.”

“I’ll book you a flight.”

“I can’t go back.”

Jack frowned. Back when Zimms called Kent Parson _Kenny_ he knew the word _can’t_ in two forms. One, as a tease—a dare or a _fuck you_ to get Jack going. “I can’t hear you,” Kent said, his teeth sunken into Jack’s neck and his cock wrapped in his hand. Two, as a plea—something that came brittle and diseased. “I can’t go back home for the holidays,” Kent had told him one year and Alicia and Bob and welcomed him instead, then and every year after, until...

“What did you do,” Jack said.

“Sometimes,” Kent said. “Things happen to you and no matter how much you fight, it ends up—fuck. You must remember.”

“Remember what?”

“What it was like before the draft.”

Jack thought it felt like falling. Like swimming in the ocean and getting caught in the whitewater. He knew how to swim, but there was air mixed in with the water and no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t get to the surface.

“No,” Jack said. “I don’t remember.”

He should have said that he couldn’t find the right way to describe it, but it was close enough. What did it matter? It was a different him.

Kent knocked on the glass with his knuckle, the sound ringing through the room.

“Do you remember when your dad tried to make that rink in the backyard?” Kent said. “But didn’t want any professional guidance or instruction. Just his own two hands. It was terrible.”

Jack remembered. It wasn’t why Kent was telling the story, though. His dad had made them go out to get wood from the hardware store, so they had an excuse to get out of the house together. They were sixteen and driving was new—freedom was new—and they kissed in an abandoned parking lot before they had to get back.

“It was lopsided,” Kent said. “How do you make a lopsided rink?”

Jack’s dad had looked at them both as they unloaded the truck like he knew. Like he sent them out there on purpose.

“Is this all I get?” Kent said.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“A couple cups, the Calder,” Kent said. “It’s everything I ever wanted.”

Jack stepped back. “That’s not true.”

“No,” Kent said. “You took away everything I’d ever wanted.”

“You should be proud to come out,” Jack said. “Especially if you won’t’ be the only one.”

“Some liberal professor tell you that?” Kent said.

“Imagine all the good it’ll do for younger players,” Jack said.

“Imagine—seriously?” Kent said. “How about you imagine for second what shit you did to me. I _get_ that you don’t care. But don’t pretend you did what you did because you’re selfless. If you’re going to say it was _for_ anything, at least admit it was for yourself.”

“Are really happy? Pretending to be someone you’re not?”

“I didn’t have a choice,” Kent said. “Where am I supposed to go, when the media starts pounding on my door? Fuck off to my rich parents in a different country?”

“I just meant,” Jack said. He ran his hands through his hair. “I mean—seven years, Kent? You’re captain and they still don’t know?”

“Who I have sex with has no place in the work I do with my team,” Kent said. “But now, that’s all they’re going to see.”

“Bitty isn’t just someone I _have sex with_ ,” Jack said.

“Well fucking congratulations. A first for you,” Kent said and turned on his heel.

The thing was, it took time for Jack to learn he was worth the love others gave him. It took a point of view on his life when it felt like he was in control. He’d told Bitty that what he had with Kent was just physical because it was the gremlin in his stomach or the need to be distracted or anything else that he disguised as affection. Now, still, he didn’t know what he should have called it.

The front door slammed behind Kent and Jack looked out over the water.

 

Kent’s phone was buzzing again and Bitty was still the only one there to pick it up. There were scattered texts from other teammates and a couple calls from a name Bitty didn’t recognize. Jeff had been checking in almost every hour since the morning, waiting for Kent himself to answer. Bitty did in his stead. He wondered how much Jeff knew.

But now, Kent was gone and Bitty didn’t know what to write back.

“He’s upset because I’ve moved on,” Jack said. “That I’m actually in a better place now.”

“It isn’t only that,” Bitty said.

“It wasn’t my fault, back then,” Jack said, just like the years of therapy had taught him to. “It wasn’t my fault that I couldn’t love him like he wanted.”

Bitty looked down at the phone, now with two texts from Jeff waiting in the inbox. “Nobody told him it wasn’t his fault either.”

 

Jack went to the rink in the afternoon, toting some of Bitty’s (and strangely, Kent’s) scones in his bag for any of his teammates who would want a bite.

He had one that morning. He thought they tasted a little saltier than Bitty’s normal ones, but hadn’t said anything.

“Zimmboni! Your little baker always so good to us,” Tater said.

Jack never had to worry about the Falcs after he’d come out. The rink was still a sanctuary, no matter how the rest of the league reacted. He knew it wasn’t his doing. This wasn’t a team he’d built over the years, but as soon as he’d talked to Georgia the first time, he knew. He wouldn’t want to go anywhere else.

If he’d been drafted, the choice would have been made for him. But, at that point, he wanted everything to be another person’s choice. Jack just wanted to say _yes_ so that any mistakes wouldn’t be his either. He was a tool for others to aim. He worked himself into the ground to make himself the sharpest tool he could be, so nobody would abandon him.

And then, it still wasn’t enough.

The anxiety took away his will. That was the worst of it. It didn’t matter what he wanted anymore. Saying yes meant he didn’t have to think and if he didn’t have to think, the gremlin wouldn’t win.

Jack relied on others to tell him what to do. “This play?” _yes_ “Red shirt?” _yes_ “Kiss me?” _yes._

 Afterword, Jack thought every decision had to be his and his alone. It took him years to figure out what it meant to really listen and make decisions that involved other people. Bitty—well, Jack didn’t know if he would have done it without him.

“Kiddo,” Marty said, hand on Jack’s shoulder and a mouth full of scone. “Gabby wants to know—oh this is good—what Bitty is making for dessert on Saturday so she can plan around that.”

“Maple crust!” Tater said. “Tell B maple crust.”

“I don’t know what he’s making,” Jack said. “But I guess I can put in your—uh—request.”

“Don’t let him worry about too much it,” Marty said and slapped his back. “Anything is fine.”

Was Jack just scared that Kent would take away that choice again? Tell him no, staying silent was better, and Jack would nod and say _yes._

Jack’s phone rang when he was packing up his gear.

“Papa?” he said when he answered.

“He’s with you, isn’t he?” Bob said.

“Kent,” Jack said. And somehow, talking about him here beside his professional teammates made it feel worse than it ever had. “How did you know?”

“Keep him there.”

Jack sat up. “What do you mean?”

“This is important, Jack,” Bob said, voice rising. “Keep him with you.”

“I—I don’t know where he is,” Jack said. “I’m at practice and we argued this morning and he left his phone—”

“Find him.”

 

Bitty picked up the phone the next time Jeff called.

“He’s not in Las Vegas, is he?”

“No,” Bitty said.

“I—I want to get him. Please, tell me where you are. I need to see him.”

Kent had been gone for hours. Bitty thought he’d return as soon as Jack left for his practice, but he didn’t. The sun was getting lower and Bitty chewed on his lip. “Providence,” Bitty said, voice soft.

“Shit.”

“Yeah,” Bitty said. “Yeah.”

 

 The morning Kent got on a plane to Providence, he’d been at a PT session with a few other guys—Scraps, Carl, Wiley, and Josh. He’d been spending a lot of time working on his shoulder lately, the reality of as many years as he’d put in so far in the game. He’d already had two knee surgeries and was trying his best to avoid the same for his shoulder.

Since the cup and the following bullshit, Scraps kept giving him this look. A little concerned, a little afraid. Every sentence he spoke to him was askew like he was trying to remember the lines from a foreign language workbook.

He’d probably talked to Jeff, the fucker.

And now, as his trainer put him through his range of motion and the guys around him joked, Scraps was looking at him like he was trying to remember the rules.

  1. Don’t talk about Jack Zimmermann (because he’s an asshole).
  2. Don’t ask why you can’t talk about Jack Zimmermann.
  3. The press are always wrong. Even when they’re right they’re wrong.
  4. Don’t ask why Kent doesn’t bring girlfriends to any of the Aces family events. It isn’t what you’re thinking, unless it is.
  5. Don’t ask why Kent doesn’t bring _anyone_ to any of the Aces family events.
  6. He’s your fucking captain.



There were times that Kent wished people would just fucking say what they wanted to and he could outright lie, instead of just lying through omission.

“How’s your hip?” Kent said, hoping Scraps could get his head out of his ass for a moment. 

“Still attached,” Scraps said.

“You actually going to do what your PT says this time? Because I can’t have you whining—”

“Yeah, yeah, Parser. I got it.”

“Mothering the boys again, Parser?” Wiley said. “Gonna start tucking them in at night with a warm glass of milk?”

“Not my fuckin’ job,” Kent said.

“Oh, but _Parser_ , I want my bedtime story,” Wiley joked.

Kent wanted to flip him off, but his arm was otherwise occupied. He flinched as his joint pinched when he raised it above his head. He was one of the least physical on the ice, his game depended on it, but he couldn’t avoid the number of times he’d been checked into the boards. 

“Hey, we going to have one of those meetings like I hear the other teams are?” Josh said. “Bout all the, you know, gay shit.”

“Eloquent,” Scraps said.

“Fuck off, you know what I meant.”

Kent wanted to brush it off. Say,  _also not my job_ , but it was, wasn’t it? It wouldn’t have even been hard. Just do the official anti-discrimination song and dance and then let them out to keep making shower jokes without a second thought. Some of the rookies even looked up to him enough to listen. Maybe. For a day or two, at least.

“Leave it to Zimmermann to make the rest of the league scramble for his mistake,” Carl said. “Couldn’t keep it in his pants for a second.”

“Nah, he’s just gotta be special,” Wiley said.

Scraps locked eyes with Kent, worry written like a fucking billboard sign over his face.

“Likes the attention,” Carl said. “Next he’s gonna be stripping for some fucking magazine and—oh, we can post those on the wall before a game and—”

The others are laughing and Kent can’t escape while his trainer has one hand on his back and on his wrist. Even Scraps was chuckling, his eyes still on Kent like he was wondering if this was what he was supposed to be doing. Making fun of Zimmermann, right? That was allowed?

“God, Zimmermann and that twink—”

“Carly, do you ever shut up?” Kent said.

“You know it’s true. He’ll never survive the ice after this.” 

_Blood and pain and “you’ll never survive, Parser.”_ Kent’s head hurt and he shrugged the trainer off his arm. _Nobody will see the bruises when it was just another hazard of the job._

“Shit, it’s like you can’t hear yourself.”

“Come on, Parser, don’t gotta go all C on us all the time.”

“I do when you’re being a fucking idiot,” Kent said.

“It’s about what those reporters keep saying, isn’t?” Wiley said. “That you and Zimmermann—”

“Fuck you,” Kent said.

“Holy shit,” Carl said. “Holy shit, it’s true, isn’t it? You and Zimmermann were totally fucking.”

Scraps’ eyes went wide as if he didn’t see this coming, and Wiley and Josh frowned. And Kent? He could have all the money in the world, pay off all the one-night-stands and failed dates and witnesses, find the best lawyers in the country, but he’d still have his own loose lips and ego. He could deny it, again and again and again. But Kent had his self-worth hanging on by the last thread of his self-control and he used his busted-up arm to punch Carl in the face.

And Carl, damn him, was still smiling. “Didn’t think someone like you could throw a punch.”

_Someone like you_ could mean a hundred different things. Someone his size, someone with his position, someone with his almost nonexistent on-ice fight history. But Kent knew what he meant. What, from now on, it would always mean.

He left without another word.

 

When Kent got back to his apartment, he didn’t even bother looking in the mirror. Didn’t bother practicing lines to diffuse the situation. Captain-like things to say in team meetings. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t imagine going back.

Because he’d never been good at facing people who hurt him. After his father left, he could hardly spend any time with his mother, because on some level, he blamed her too. And then when she got sick, he paid every single bill, but it still took him until the end to go visit.

He left his meds in the bathroom cabinet, but he tried to count the number he had left in his head. The number was too small, or too big, depending on his point of view. He looked out at his balcony and felt the ground under him shift, a sudden wave of vertigo overtaking him.

There was a hierarchy of hurt. A process to saying goodbye. Somehow, within the span of a few weeks, Jack had become the greatest and least of those hurts at once. It was all his fault, but he was still the only one who understood.

Kent didn’t cry when he smoothed down Kit’s ruffled fur as she slept before heading out the door to the airport. 

 

“Kent?” Bitty shouted. It felt ridiculous to think they’d find him this way, but what else was there to do? “Kent?”

Bitty and Jack decided to work their way down the waterways—Jack following the course of the river and Bitty going down the canal. “Whenever we lost,” Jack had said on the phone, a waver in his voice Bitty hadn’t heard before. “We would go to the river. I thought—I always thought it was because that’s where I wanted to go. But I found out he went by himself more often than we went together, just to sit and watch the water. Fuck, how do we know he didn’t just check into a hotel?”

“He—um—left his wallet here too, when he left.”

“Bits—”

“We’ll find him, Jack.”

“I didn’t think,” Jack said. “Of all people, I should have—”

“No, honey, no,” Bitty said. He was already on the sidewalk, walking downtown. “Where do you think Kent finds water in Vegas?”

Bitty heard the slam of a car door and the start of an engine on Jack’s side of the line. “I don’t know.”

 

Jack had never defeated his gremlin. There would never be a time it wouldn’t be with him—part of him. Anxiety was one part of it, the rising swells of _never good enough_ that took him and threw him against the rocks. But now, he had Bitty to help him stay afloat.

But sometimes he had thoughts, or memories of thoughts, from a time he went by _Zimms_. One of the thoughts was exactly how many pills it had taken for him to stop thinking altogether. That it was the thinking, not a person or a game, that made him swallow them.

Jack knew there were many ways to stop thinking. Getting lost in his sport was one. Sleeping late and drinking until he couldn’t stand was another. So was imagining he was a twig from a branch upriver, traveling down the rapids of the river until he reached a lazy pool at someone’s feet.

 

It turned out, Jack had been right about Kent.

Bitty found him at Canal Walk, where the RISD students and summer art camps were lounging around with directionless high school kids and people in Brown sweatshirts, watching the tourists take boats down the river. Bitty sat next to him on the bench and Kent didn’t stir, eyes fixed on the metal baskets sticking up from the water.

“I’m gay,” Kent said.

Bitty nodded. “Thanks for—um—telling me.”

“I don’t think I’ve—no, I know—I’ve never said that before.”

“With Jack…?”

Kent laughed. “We never said. It didn’t matter as long as we had each other. And when we didn’t? Well, still, didn’t really matter.”

“It’s scary to say,” Bitty said.

“At some point,” Kent said. “It’s scarier for other people to decide those things for you.”

Bitty didn’t want to ask how Kent was doing. Didn’t think it’d be enough. He didn’t want to think about what Kent walked out into the city to do. What he came to _Providence_ to do.

Bitty also didn’t want to apologize for something that was far bigger than him. He couldn’t apologize for the world, for what other people had done before him, for a connection between them that Bitty had no part in making. But then, what was there to say? He texted Jack saying he’d found Kent and where to meet them.

“What the hell is that thing,” Kent said, gesturing at the basket.

“WaterFire,” Bitty said.

“Water. Fire.”

“They light them on fire. Sometimes.”

“So, this what college towns are like?” Kent said.

Bitty watched the skateboarders on the water’s edge, waiting for one of their boards to go skidding into the canal. “Something like this, yeah.”

“I don’t think I would have done well in college.”

But, really, it was the easiest thing in the world to imagine Kent at Samwell, chirping the frogs and running practices. Even studying in the library, probably something esoteric, just to prove he wasn’t just some other athlete. To prove he could.

“I think you would have done just fine.”

Kent shifted in his seat. “I think,” he said. “I don’t want to believe I could have done well, because then what was all this for?”

Kent’s words were similar to the consolations Bitty made himself for quitting figure skating. That he wouldn’t have gone to Samwell, he wouldn’t have made the friends he did. He wouldn’t have Jack.

Happiness for success, or success for happiness. Why didn’t they think they could have both? Was that why Kent was so angry at Jack?

Both, neither.

It was just Bitty and Kent sitting on a bench. One of the skateboarders finally fell hard enough that his board flew out from under him and they heard a splash.

“Do you want to talk about what happened?” Bitty asked.

“It was something stupid,” Kent said. “But inevitable.”

 “So, what are we going to do about it?”

Kent huffed. “We?”

“Kent, hun,” Bitty said. “I learned a while ago that doing things alone was the easiest way to get them wrong.”

“It’s too late, I—”

_“I,_ for one, would like more allies on my side,” Bitty said. “What do you think?”

Kent frowned. “I didn’t come here to force you to—I shouldn’t have come. To make you—”

“Kent.” Bitty’s heart tightened and he looked at his hands. “Don’t apologize for needing help.”

“I don’t know what I want.”

“We’ll figure it out.”

 

Jeff Troy arrived that night, just as Kent was getting off the phone with Bad Bob. Bitty already had three pies made because who knows what that boy liked. Kent helped with one.

When Jeff took Kent into the guest room to talk, Bitty and Jack let them be. They’d be just outside, Bitty assured him, in case they were needed. Meanwhile, he took out the photo album Alicia had lent him and curled up next to Jack on the couch.

“Don’t tell me those are my baby photos,” Jack said.

Bitty laughed. “You’re safe, for now.”

They look through together, Jack supplying the names of places and people Bitty didn’t have before. He told him about his first team, a neighbor’s dog he played with every day before practice, his friends in elementary school.

“After that, most of my friends were teammates,” Jack said. “Didn’t have much time for anything else, you know?”

“You didn’t get tired of hockey bros?” Bitty said.

“Some were better than others,” Jack said. He put his nose to Bitty’s temple and Bitty put his legs across Jack’s lap. “Still the case.”

“Still not tired of hockey bros.”

Jack kissed him. “I’d say not. “

Bitty knew what was on the next page. Even though Kent was in the next room, his voice low and muffled and sounding so tired, he was a little wary of Jack’s reaction. What he didn’t anticipate was how different the shots looked to him now, from when he’d seen them with Alicia just a few weeks ago.

One of the photos was a crude selfie. Something that looked like Kent had stolen Jack’s camera from him at the last moment, the angle askew and the focus a little off. He looked happy. Not maliciously so, just honestly giddy to spend this moment with another person. No, to spend the moment with Jack.

“We didn’t know what to call it,” Jack said. He touched the edge of the photo, tracing the line of light. “It felt like scoring a goal. Completing a perfect pass. How dumb does that sound, that we could only talk in hockey metaphors? But it was how we did it.”

“How long was—”

“This was before we first kissed,” Jack said. “A couple months before. Just a couple of good teammates, eh?”

Bitty laughed. “Clueless.”

“I hope I’ve learned better how to tell you how much I care about you,” Jack said. “I don’t know how I would have been if I’d stayed in that environment. I’m still not perfect, but—”

“Better than scoring a goal?”

“Better than the game-winning goal in the Stanley cup finals,” Jack said. “I love you, Bits.”

“Love you too.”

The next photo was just of Kent, sitting by a river, old Montreal in the background. It was something close to how Jack still took photos now—the framing of the buildings around an emotional center. Kent was pointing at something off camera, in the distance. He hadn’t noticed Jack was shooting.

“It wasn’t fair, back then, that we never knew how to talk about it.”

Bitty tucked his hands under his knees. “I learned that at Samwell, too.”

The door opened to the guest room and Jeff stepped out. He was awkward around them both, for good reason. He still looked at Jack like he was a phantom, or something that smelled a little wrong. “Kent’s going to try to sleep,” he said.

“Should we—”

“I’m leaving the door open,” Jeff said. “It’ll be—um—it’ll be fine.”

Bitty stood, closing the photo album and leaving it in Jack’s lap. He grabbed his phone from the kitchen counter and motioned to his and Jack’s bedroom.

“I need to make a phone call,” he said. “I’ll try to be quiet.”

“K, Bits.”

Bitty closed the door behind him and climbed into the bed. He grabbed Senior Bun from where he was resting on the pillow and tucked it to his chest. He took a breath.

The call picked up after the second ring.

“Hey, Mama,” Bitty said. “I’m sorry, I should have called a long time ago.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm also dieofthatroar on tumblr where I sometimes think too deeply about fictional assholes


End file.
